Sometimes it is the little things which stick with you when you travel.
It was sweltering during our days in Istanbul, especially near the end of each day. No surprise to me that I loved the ferries, but it never dawned on me how much they could be part of Istanbulites’ own lives.
One morning I was remarking on the heat with the concierge at the hotel, upon whom I often inflicted my mangled Turkish.
(Note to the French in particular: there are some people who are delighted when foreigners try to speak their language, even badly; it means you are want to join their group, that you “like” them.)
Yes, she said, yesterday was especially hot. After we got off work at six, we still had a long time to wait to eat iftar [the indulgent meal which marks the end of each day’s fasting during Ramadan]. So we went down and bought a couple of ferry tokens and spent two hours going back and forth across the Bosphorus from Beşiktaş to Üsküdar. Everyone does it when it’s hot like this.
First, I tried to imagine what other public transportation I might take just for the fun of it, apart from bullet trains in Japan and European overnighters. And then for days all I could think of was my own riff on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s famous lines:
We were very hot, we were very merry,
we had gone back and forth before iftar on the ferry.